chapter 140

. But besides these verbal proofs, I desire to submit others which make the thing most manifest. One is that he inverted the voyages he made, applying the first to the second, and making out that things which belonged to one happened in the other. He asserts that in the first voyage they were absent eighteen months, and this is not possible, for after being absent from Castille for five months they came to this island, and they could not have returned again to the mainland to coast along it for such a distance, owing to contrary winds and currents, except with great difficulty and after a long time. Thus his voyage to the continent only took five months, within which time he arrived here, as has been already explained, and as Hojeda told some of the Spaniards who were here, before he left this island. He then made an inroad on some of the surrounding islands, seizing some of the natives and carrying them off to Castille. According to the statement of Americo, they took 222 slaves, and this occurs at the end of his first _Navigation_. "And we, following the way to Spain, at length arrived at the port of Cadiz with 222 captured persons," etc. Another statement is that certain injuries and violences done by Hojeda and his followers against the Indians and Spaniards in Xaragua in his first voyage is placed by Americo at the end of his second _Navigation_. He there says: "We departed, and, for the sake of obtaining many things of which we were in need, we shaped a course for the island of Antiglia, being that which Christopher Columbus discovered a few years ago. Here we took many supplies on board, and remained two months and seventeen days. Here we endured many dangers and troubles from the same Christians who were in this island with Columbus. I believe this was caused by envy, but, to avoid prolixity, I will refrain from recounting what happened." The Portuguese then called this island of Espanola Antilla, and this Americo used the word Antiglia, because he was writing in Lisbon. In the following